[Dr Lancer-X]

MZX's lack of any operator ordering other than parenthesis, while very weird for standard infix notation, is something that I'm starting to feel might be beneficial in programming languages in general. There's a slight mental load required whenever you need to work out what order *, >, && and ^ are evaluated in, especially when reading other people's code, and this is compounded when you're using a language you're not intimately familiar with (PHP, for example, is notorious for its left-associative ?: operator) or when dealing with non-standard operators.

Occasionally you need more parentheses in MZX than you would need in another language, but that downside is balanced by what I believe is the much bigger upside of _never_ having to wonder in what order something will be executed.

[Lachesis]

FWIW I usually need fewer parentheses in MegaZeux than I need in languages with standard infix.

[CJA]

I have become so spoiled by MZX's lack of order of operations [mostly for things like color "('cycle'/8%2*3+12)"]

[Exophase]

I got some flak for the unordered operations way back when I added them, and I won't pretend that the real reason wasn't that it was a lot easier to implement that way. But I'm glad you guys are comfortable with it now Good thing because that's one of those decisions that you can't ever really undo.

I personally hate relying on order of operations, especially when it gets pretty hard to remember (and sometimes really non-intuitive) in C-like languages. Even worse when you throw in C++ style operator overloading. I almost always use parentheses when mixing operations in expressions, it makes it a lot easier for me to quickly parse the code I'm reading.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 15 June 2016 - 04:22 PM, said:

Even worse when you throw in C++ style operator overloading.

brb, overloading operator,()

[MicMotorhead]

@Wervyn

Allright, I'll keep the lack of decimals in mind when I figure out how to make the rest of my game.
Your suggestion of simply putting the * before the / actually did the trick for my current problem! />

I have no programming knowledge unlike most long time MZX'ers. I have used MZX mostly unassisted since around
2003 or something, but only recently have I attempted making something slightly more complex, which is why
I'm now running into all sorts of issues.

MZX isn't really a "competitive" game engine, but I love it anyway like you guys do. It's just fun.
Making a game in MZX is almost like playing a game. I'm trying to learn Unity but... yeah, I'll keep
playing with MZX because I'd just hate to see such a neat little thing die. I hope at least a handful
new games will be released every year for a good while yet.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 15 June 2016 - 01:10 PM

[Dr Lancer-X]

With MZX you can make everything (except sound and music) from within MZX itself, although it can be useful to invoke external tools at times. If we could make something like that, but with the pizzazz to fill much the same niche as Unity and UE4 (keeping in mind that these engines are 99% used for horrific cookie-cutter games thrown together with barely any competence, that still end up on Steam for some reason) that would be pretty neat. If we had a basic 3D modeller along the lines of a simpler SketchUp, some basic tools for skeletal animation and a paint program suitable for texturing in place of MZX's char and palette editor...

I just find it pretty sad that there's still no GCSs that can really equal MegaZeux for rapidly prototyping game concepts.

[MicMotorhead]

Dr Lancer-X, on 15 June 2016 - 10:46 PM, said:

With MZX you can make everything (except sound and music) from within MZX itself, although it can be useful to invoke external tools at times. If we could make something like that, but with the pizzazz to fill much the same niche as Unity and UE4 (keeping in mind that these engines are 99% used for horrific cookie-cutter games thrown together with barely any competence, that still end up on Steam for some reason) that would be pretty neat. If we had a basic 3D modeller along the lines of a simpler SketchUp, some basic tools for skeletal animation and a paint program suitable for texturing in place of MZX's char and palette editor...

I just find it pretty sad that there's still no GCSs that can really equal MegaZeux for rapidly prototyping game concepts.

I think one of the strengths of MZX - in a strange way - is that it can't do much more than text. It is no doubt frustrating at times to not be able to use some simple .gif sprites or break the limitations of the awkward rectangular blocks, but this simplicity makes MZX - like you said - ideal for making things quickly.

It's also kind of like a dogme movie. You got a set of rules you have to work inside, which forces you to be creative.
Still, it does happen frequently that I get an idea for a game, consider making it in MZX for a second, only to go "f*** it! Not gonna happen."


If only the graphics format was different, though... you could fool most people into thinking it was a far less archaic engine than it is. Personally, I think it's great that it just does 2D - I'd just like to work outisde of that stiff grid of rectangles and use some .png's or whatever. I have a soft spot for text mode games but I don't think most of the world feels the same way

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 15 June 2016 - 11:19 PM

[MicMotorhead]

I want to make a robot go east and keep trying, but the "persistent go" command only works for some directions. I'm using an older version of MZX though, so it's probably (hopefully) been patched out. Are there alternate means of making a robot keep trying a direction, until it's not blocked anymore?
I'm in version 2.83b, I believe.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 19 September 2019 - 09:13 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

Persistent go works just fine. Make sure you read what the command actually does in the help file though. If you want something that works like the regular GO command, there isn't one- you can do TRY in a loop until it succeeds though.

[MicMotorhead]

Dr Lancer-X, on 19 September 2019 - 12:07 PM, said:

Persistent go works just fine. Make sure you read what the command actually does in the help file though. If you want something that works like the regular GO command, there isn't one- you can do TRY in a loop until it succeeds though.

Thanks, I'll look at it and see if the TRY command is maybe a better fit.

It's very strange though. I made a robot that goes north 3 spaces, resets back to the starting position, then south 3 spaces, back to start, etc., while always waiting for any eventual enemies that block it to get out of the way.
When I copied the robot and simply replaced all NORTH directions with WEST, and all SOUTH directions with EAST, the new object moves only west and south, but never east.

[Dr Lancer-X]

MicMotorhead, on 20 September 2019 - 11:07 PM, said:

It's very strange though. I made a robot that goes north 3 spaces, resets back to the starting position, then south 3 spaces, back to start, etc., while always waiting for any eventual enemies that block it to get out of the way.
When I copied the robot and simply replaced all NORTH directions with WEST, and all SOUTH directions with EAST, the new object moves only west and south, but never east.

Could you paste a minimal code sample that reproduces the problem? Because I can confirm this works fine:

: "l"
persistent go "wwweeeeeewww"
goto "l"

[hseiken]

I have a question about calculating decimals.

Is there a way to do basic arithmetic using decimals? When I add a point to a number it defaults to be a string...

Im sure there's a way to handle it but I'm just not smart enough to find it in the help file.....I'm guessing it might be a splitting of a number and reconstructing the final value but I hope not...I

[Lachesis]

MegaZeux isn't capable of floating point arithmetic yet, so you have to use fixed point arithmetic if you want decimal precision. There are a couple of ways you can do this using shift/multiplication values or separate variables.

Here's an example that uses a multiplication of 1000 to get three decimal digits if you're just trying to print decimal numbers:

set "mzx_speed" to 2
lockplayer
set "spr0_refx" to "playerx"
set "spr0_refy" to "playery"
set "spr0_width" to 1
set "spr0_height" to 1
set "spr0_unbound" to 1

set "x" to 0
set "y" to 0
: "l"
inc "x" by 1953
inc "y" by 1082
put c?? Sprite p00 at "('x'/1000)" "('y'/1000)"
. "print the decimal portion into a string prefixed with 000 and then print only the last 3 digits of each string."
set "$a" "000('x'%1000)"
set "$b" "000('y'%1000)"
* "x=('x'/1000).&$a+-3& y=('y'/1000).&$b+-3&"
wait for 1
goto "l"

Here's an example that gives a sprite 8 bits of subpixel precision by storing the x and y values in terms of subpixels and using signed right shift to floor divide out the subpixels (this is much more useful for sprites due to its better rounding behavior for negative numbers):

set "mzx_speed" to 2
lockplayer
set "spr0_refx" to "playerx"
set "spr0_refy" to "playery"
set "spr0_width" to 1
set "spr0_height" to 1
set "spr0_unbound" to 1

set "x" to 0
set "y" to 0
: "l"
inc "x" by 500
inc "y" by 277
put c?? Sprite p00 at "('x'>>>8)" "('y'>>>8)"
. "actually printing the precision in decimal is a little more involved..."
set "$a" to "000('x'a255*1000>>>8)"
set "$b" to "000('y'a255*1000>>>8)"
* "x=('x'/256).&$a+-3& y=('y'/256).&$b+-3&"
wait for 1
goto "l"

This post has been edited by Lachesis: 30 May 2024 - 03:43 AM
Reason for edit: added precision display and decimal version

[DDCecil]

Is there any way in Robotics to delete an entire board from the current .mzx file?
For now I've been: fading out the game with color intensity during a cutscene, teleporting to that board, sending most of the memory hogging robots except some small ones and the one that will teleport me back to "die", and fading in back to another board after the cutscene board.Just wondering if there's an easier way.

[Lachesis]

There is not a way to delete boards entirely from Robotic.

Potential alternatives to sending specific robots a label are the CHANGE command or using loops/COPY BLOCK to wipe the board contents. I don't know if either of those would be easier.

[Feoramund]

Lachesis, on 29 May 2024 - 11:14 PM, said:

MegaZeux isn't capable of floating point arithmetic yet, so you have to use fixed point arithmetic if you want decimal precision.

The lack of floats sounds crazy these days, but it's understandable considering the age from when it came. I need to try programming in it again some day.